Note: Citations are based on reference standards. However, formatting rules can vary widely between applications and fields of interest or study. The specific requirements or preferences of your reviewing publisher, classroom teacher, institution or organization should be applied.

"In eighteenth-century North Carolina, German-speaking settlers from the Moravian Church founded a religious refuge - an ideal society, they hoped, whose blueprint for daily life was the Bible and whose Chief Elder was Christ himself. As the community grew, so did its demand for labor, and Moravians began buying slaves to help build and operate their farms, ships, and industries. The Moravian Brethren believed in the universalism of the gospel and baptized dozens of African Americans, who became full members of tightly knit Moravian congregations. For decades, white and black Brethren worked and worshiped together, far removed from the sprawling plantations to the east. Black Moravians spoke, read, and sang in German, played Moravian music on classical instruments, and shared communal dormitories with white Moravians. According to Jon Sensbach, the Moravian social experiment demonstrated the fluidity of race in an age when Revolutionary rhetoric championed the rights of man - even though white Brethren never abandoned their belief that black slavery was ordained by God."--Jacket.Read more...

Abstract:

In colonial North Carolina, German-speaking settlers from the Moravian Church founded a religious refuge, a society they hoped would live by Biblical teachings. The Moravian Brethren bought slaves to help operate their farms and industries. This volume examines that era.Read more...

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

[A] valuable contribution for historians of African-Americans, religion, and colonial North America."Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

""In eighteenth-century North Carolina, German-speaking settlers from the Moravian Church founded a religious refuge - an ideal society, they hoped, whose blueprint for daily life was the Bible and whose Chief Elder was Christ himself. As the community grew, so did its demand for labor, and Moravians began buying slaves to help build and operate their farms, ships, and industries. The Moravian Brethren believed in the universalism of the gospel and baptized dozens of African Americans, who became full members of tightly knit Moravian congregations. For decades, white and black Brethren worked and worshiped together, far removed from the sprawling plantations to the east. Black Moravians spoke, read, and sang in German, played Moravian music on classical instruments, and shared communal dormitories with white Moravians. According to Jon Sensbach, the Moravian social experiment demonstrated the fluidity of race in an age when Revolutionary rhetoric championed the rights of man - even though white Brethren never abandoned their belief that black slavery was ordained by God."--Jacket."